[Bug 161818] firefox flash-plugin automatic installation fails on youtube

[Marcus Granado]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: flashplugin-nonfree

It seems that some users are having problems with the automatic
installation of firefox extensions such as flash, in specific sites such
as youtube. These sites query firefox about the availability of the
flash plugin, and if not found, redirect the user to a proprietary
"download adobe flash" page, instead of serving the page with the flash
object which would trigger the automatic flash installation.

A simple solution might be to hack firefox to always provide the
information that the flash capability is present, even when the flash
plugin is not yet installed. Therefore, the site would provide the flash
object, and the automatic flash plugin installation would kick in.


More details in the discussion at http://lwn.net/Articles/256641/#Comments
Some quotes:
"Firefox Extension Issues

Posted Nov 1, 2007 18:40 UTC (Thu) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link]
http://lwn.net/Articles/256788/

If you visit a site with flash and you don't have a flash plugin available, then the 7.10
version of Ubuntu Firefox will offer to download and install the Ubuntu plugin.  I've seen
this work: you get a nice little dialog asking you if you want to use the non-free Adobe
plugin, or the new GNU flash plugin.  It then asks for your password (for sudo) and installs
using the graphical installer.  All is goodness and magic.

Similarly, when I tried to play an mp3 file using gstreamer, it detected that I didn't have
the right codecs etc and offered to install them for me.  All was goodness there as well.

Unfortunately, all is not ALWAYS goodness.  In the flash plugin case, the problem is that some
websites can detect that you don't have the correct plugin and if they do, they'll throw up
their OWN "install flash" site; that's what YouTube does and that's what you ran into.  This
obviously does not use Ubuntu's package installer, since you're installing from Adobe.  It's
not clear how Ubuntu could solve this, because Firefox makes a request for the page and the
page that comes back makes no mention of wanting to run a flash applet; rather it contains a
button to install flash from Adobe.  Maybe Firefox could be set to "cheat" and reply that it
does have flash available, even if that plugin was not installed, so that servers would serve
up flash content rather than suggesting you install the plugin.  The bad news is that probably
75% of the flash-enabled sites I use now have this special "install the plugin" code.  I
actually had to wander the web for quite a while looking for sites that contained flash but
DIDN'T have this special handling, so I could see the new Firefox automatic plugin install.

For the mp3 case, the problem is not all applications are properly enabled.  Gstreamer is,
but, for example, I moved over all my music files into my new account and open Rhythmbox to
scan them all before I installed the mp3 support.  The Ogg files were detected just fine but
rather than noticing my mp3 files would need a new codec and offering to install it, Rhythmbox
just marked them all as "failed".  This is unfortunate, but you have to start somewhere.  I'm
sure the Ubuntu folks are working on getting more tools integrated with the auto-install
features."

** Affects: flashplugin-nonfree (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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firefox flash-plugin automatic installation fails on youtube
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/161818
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